Keep on fracking in the free world (apologies to Neil Young)

If you haven't read Spencer Hunt's amazing three-day series on oil and gas drilling in the Utica
and Marcellus shales, then scoot on over to this
link and start
reading.

Spencer, the Dispatch's environment reporter, spent the past few months combing through public
records, traveling to drilling operations and farms where drilling has begun and attending meetings
with state officials, drilling company operators and landowners.

The series points out the proposed benefits of drilling and hydraulic fracturing (or fracking)
across Ohio; the environmental and health risks associated with the practice; the tricky business
of signing leases with energy companies; and how critics say the industry is too cozy with the
state.

Don't think this affects you? Think again. This state is about to see a drilling boom unlike
anything its seen in a century. The state parks you visit are going to be opened for drilling. The
state is allowing drilling waste to be pumped deep below ground. Your land might be a prime shale
site, but mineral-rights leases signed decades ago could remove any say you have on future
drilling.

Read the series, leave your comments on the stories and let us know what you think.